


Closings and Openings

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Olympics AU, Rumbelle - Freeform, With A Side Order Of Snowing; Red Warrior and Stable Queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 19:14:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7769800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the Olympic Games come to a close, two athletes from opposite sides of the world and very different sports wonder how they came to know each other, and whether this magnificent event could be the start of something very special between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closings and Openings

**Author's Note:**

> Nick Skelton and John Whitaker are veteran British showjumpers, competing in Rio, aged 58 and 61 respectively.

 

“Do you think that this would have worked if we’d all been competing in the same sports?” Belle asked.

“Huh?” Gold dragged his eyes away from the city skyline below them and back into the present and the lights and sounds of the celebrations going on in the Athletes’ Village behind them. “What do you mean, this?”

“Us,” Belle said, waving her arms around the group of people who had, by mutual agreement, left the post-closing ceremony parties and come out to this far corner of the complex in order to be able to hear themselves think.

“David and Mulan compete in the same sport,” Gold pointed out, nodding over to where the two fencers were chatting animatedly. Belle rolled her eyes.

“Yes, but David and Mulan are hardly going to come up against each other in the finals, are they? What if David had been shooting or Mulan had been on the asymmetric bars? Do you think we’d all have got on so well then?”

Gold laughed. “Probably not.”

They fell into silence for a while, and Belle had to wonder at how much they clashed in their team jackets, her green and yellow next to Gold’s red, white and blue.

“I’m glad it ended up like this though,” she said presently. “I think it really embodies the spirit of the Olympics.”

It was a bit of a mystery how they’d ended up together and become such good friends having never met each other before. Nine athletes from seven different countries and eight different sports somehow finding and befriending each other in the midst of the intensity and pressure of this prestigious sporting event. They’d all met in dribs and drabs over the course of the two weeks, and now here they were, putting off the inevitable goodbyes whilst they showed off the rather impressive fourteen medals that they’d racked up between them. Belle looked down at her own. Gold, silver, bronze. A nice full set. She should probably quit right now whilst she was ahead as she’d never have it this good again.

Well, three golds would be nice.

She glanced across at the others again. David had left Mulan to go and speak to his compatriots, the three Americans clustered together in one corner looking suspiciously like they were planning something. Ruby had taken up David’s place by Mulan’s side, and if the looks the tall Canadian runner and petite Chinese lady were exchanging were anything to go by, Belle was rather glad that David was no longer playing third wheel. Now that would be a story for the grandkids. _How did you meet? Well, we met at the Olympics, actually…_

She glanced sideways at Gold next to her. His stance was relaxed, leaning on the railing that separated them from the steep hill beyond, but his eyes were still showing all of the same sharp focus as when he had a shotgun in his hands and was aiming at moving targets hundreds of metres away. She wasn’t sure what it was about him that attracted her so much. Ariel had joked that it was because he was about twenty years older than most of the other athletes and she was looking for a man, not a boy. Belle had rolled her eyes at the time, but she couldn’t deny that his maturity and experience did set him apart from some of the younger athletes whom she had seen and admired aesthetically, but not been drawn to as much as she was to Gold.

A flash of red caught her eye and she saw Ariel grinning at them, just out of Gold’s eye line. The Danish swimmer, silver medals glinting around her neck, was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, her eyes moving from Belle to the blissfully oblivious Gold and back again, making kissy faces. Belle frantically waved her away, but Ariel merely shrugged and tapped her watch. She was right, Belle didn’t exactly have much time in which to make a move if she was going to make one at all. Come tomorrow, they would all be packing up and setting off home to their separate countries – and with him in Scotland and her in Australia, it was highly unlikely that they would bump into each other in the street. The only trouble was, would he even want her to make a move? It wasn’t as if they had really known each other very long.

Still, in these few days that they had spent together, Belle thought that she had learned more about this quiet, sharp Scotsman than she could have done in a month in normal circumstances. When their individual sports were completed and their medals won, they had both stayed on to cheer on the rest of their teammates, and in the downtime they’d ended up gravitating towards each other, sharing stories about their vastly different sports – Belle had yet to think of two events that were more disparate than double trap shooting and artistic gymnastics – and ribbing each other mercilessly during the cycling events, traditionally the fiercest rivalry between Great Britain and Australia. It had come so naturally, from that first moment when they had met out here in this peaceful spot, both having escaped the watchful eyes of their coaches and teammates to get a welcome breath of fresh air. Gold had been reticent at first, guarded, but she’d managed to draw him out of his shell by sheer tenacity.

“Are you always this persistent?” he had grumbled to her once.

“I wouldn’t be a gymnast if I gave up every time I landed a tumble badly now, would I?” she had countered.

She wouldn’t have won three medals if she hadn’t been persistent from the age of four when she’d decided she’d wanted to be a ballet dancer, and when that fell by the wayside, a gymnast, something that she would not and could not give up on, despite the number of broken bones and torn ligaments she’d suffered as a result. She didn’t tell him that though. She could tell that he already knew how far her sheer tenacity had got her. Bronze on the beam, silver as part of the team all-around, and that much coveted gold on the floor, always her best apparatus as the inner ballerina that had never truly died came to the fore.

So he’d conceded. He always did, except on the fact that he refused to call the floor an apparatus: “it’s just a square of floor!” She didn’t know why he indulged her so much, but she could tell from his eyes – so dark, so perceptive, so expressive – that he really didn’t mind whenever she won their arguments. Well. Not arguments per se. Disagreements. Differences of opinion. She thought back to their first and only ‘date’, if it could be called such. He’d taken her to the McDonalds in the Village for her first Big Mac in months to celebrate winning her gold and the victorious end of her Olympic competition.

Ariel tapped her watch again and gestured to Ruby and Mulan, who were now locked in a tight embrace, uncaring of the rest of the world going on around them.

There was a wolf whistle from the direction of the Village, and Belle turned sharply to see Killian Jones. The sailor was swaying slightly, draped in an Irish flag and obviously on his way back to his room. Before anyone else of their little group could do anything, Graham rolled his eyes and shouted “fuck off, Jones”, before repeating the sentiment in Irish Gaelic and adding a few choice hand gestures before Jones finally got the messaging and swayed away, humming out of tune.

Graham sighed as he came over to Belle and Gold.

“I never thought I’d be glad of my own country missing out on a medal, but I’m incredibly pleased that the bastard only got fifth,” he muttered. “All the same, I’d better go and make sure he actually finds his room and doesn’t start trying to get into bed with the synchronised swimming coach by accident. Or on purpose, for that matter. I guess this is goodbye, and well, see you in four years.”

He shook hands with both of them and Belle pulled him into a fierce hug. She’d liked getting to know Graham, with his soft accent (she must have a thing about accents, she thought, thinking of Gold’s rough brogue and how it wrapped her up like a hug) and his wicked sense of humour. He laughed when she finally let him go, and looked at Gold, who threw his hands up in defence.

“I’m not a hugger,” he said hastily.

The javelin thrower laughed. “I bet Australia here can change your mind.” Belle beamed at him beatifically. “I’d best be off,” he added. “Give my regards to Mulan and Ruby, I feel I really shouldn’t interrupt them. And congratulations on your successes.”

“The same to you,” Belle said, eyeing his medal.  “Come back next time and make it a gold.”

“Don’t worry, I intend to.”

Goodbyes were exchanged and the Irish athlete left them, going to say his farewells to their other newfound friends before jogging to catch up to Jones and steer him away from the trickling fountain lest he fall in. In an event already plagued with controversy and injury, it wouldn’t do to have one of the athletes drown in three inches of water on the last night.

Belle sighed and turned to Gold to find him watching her. The light was playing off the silver in his hair and it gave him an almost ethereal look. He didn’t look _old_ by any manner or means, but it couldn’t be denied that he was _older_ , than Belle at least.

“Will you be back next time?” she asked. She didn’t want to ask the outright question of _are you retiring_ in case he got the wrong end of the stick. He’d joked so often about a pretty young thing like her going around with an old codger like him, but Belle could see the depth of the self-deprecation in his dark eyes. She’d tried to reassure him that she enjoyed his company immensely and didn’t care how old he was, and she thought the message had got through.

Gold gave a soft huff of laughter. “I don’t know. A lot can happen in four years.”

Belle didn’t press the point. He spoke truthfully, and in that moment, Belle wanted to be there for all that was happening for those four years.

She’d had to go and fall for a man on the opposite side of the world, hadn’t she?

“I’ll miss you if you don’t come,” she pouted. “Who else am I going to get sarcastic with about the cycling?”

“I’ll miss you too,” Gold said. Was this it, then, the beginning of their goodbye, being left alone before they’d really got to know each other?

“Oh please, I came over here to get away from people making moon eyes at each other, don’t you two start.”

Belle gave an inward sigh at the unwanted interruption from Regina; she normally got on well with the spirited American rider but her timing could be better. The young woman was grinning from ear to ear; it was her first Olympics, her mother having retired at the previous games and eighteen year old Regina now taking her place and taking the equestrian events by storm. Belle glanced over her shoulder at the other US athletes. David and Mary Margaret were indeed looking very loved up.

“How long have they been together?” Gold asked.

“Eight days,” Regina said cheerfully. “They’d met before, obviously, but they met properly when Mary Margaret got plastered with Ursula Tempest after they got their medals on Saturday and she kept trying to get into David’s room instead of her own.”

Belle burst into fits of giggles, mainly because she couldn’t imagine the little dark-haired archer looking anything less than prim and perfect, and the image of her three and a half sheets to the wind was an incredibly amusing one.

“Actually the real reason I came over was to ask you how well you know your own archery team, Gold,” Regina said.

Gold raised an eyebrow. “Considering we share the common goal of shooting projectiles at targets, reasonably well. Why?”

“Well, tonight’s going to be my last chance to meet that really cute one with the beard and I was hoping you might be able to introduce me.”

“That really cute one with the beard is Robin Locksley, and unfortunately he’s already gone home,” Gold said.

“Oh.” There was a pause. “Is he single?”

Gold turned his laughter into a hasty cough. “Unfortunately not. He’s married with a four-year-old son.”

Regina shrugged. “Ah well. It was worth a shot.”

“You know, I think one of your own teammates might be worth taking a look at,” Belle said sagely. “I was watching the podium when you were getting your medals for the team jumping. Daniel Ostler couldn’t keep his eyes off you.”

Regina went bright red. “Really?”

Belle nodded.

“Oh. Oh, well, that changes things.” Regina glanced over in the direction of the USA’s rooms in the Village and a somewhat dreamy look came over her face.

Belle chuckled. “Go on, go and get him.”

Regina nodded absently. “Yes.” Finally she looked back at Belle and Gold. “Will you be in Tokyo?” she asked. “It seems a shame to say goodbye forever now.”

Belle nodded. “As long as I qualify, I’m there.” She looked over at Gold, who shifted uncomfortably.

“I’ll be fifty-seven,” he pointed out.

“So?” Regina exclaimed. “If John Whitaker and Nick Skelton can still ride at their ages, you can still shoot a clay pigeon at fifty-seven!”

Gold conceded that point, and they continued to talk for a while, although Regina was still bobbing up and down on her feet to glance at the accommodation buildings every so often, even as Ariel came over to take their leave of them and dispense her bone-crushing hugs – Gold couldn't escape this time. Finally Regina’s resolve was buoyed enough and she too left in search of her fellow rider, leaving Belle and Gold alone once more. Gold turned back to the skyline, ignoring the noise and lights from the Village behind them, and they remained in companionable silence for a long while.

“So what happens now?” Belle asked. She knew that they would just have to go back to how they had been before. Logistically they had to, there was no other way. Long distance relationships never worked. She knew that from the years she’d spent training in the US.

“Well, we could go back to the way we were and pretend this never happened,” Gold said. “That’s probably the best way.”

“Or?” Belle prompted. “We could do something else? We could see where this goes?”

She knew that she was being forward, but she didn’t care. If it all blew up in her face then she didn’t have to see him ever again and no harm would have been done, and she’d still have the memories of these past few days spent together.

“Would you like to?” Gold asked. Belle nodded, and he smiled, an open, genuine smile. The same smile he’d had when he’d accepted his namesake medal on the podium.

She loved it when he smiled like that.

“Well, in that case…” He paused. “I’ve heard that there are some excellent shooting ranges in Melbourne. I may have to come and test them out for myself.”

Belle just beamed, and Gold smiled back, and then she went up on her tiptoes, throwing her arms around his neck and leaning in for a tentative kiss on the lips.

Gold gave an endearing squeak of surprise at the sudden affection, but relaxed into the kiss, his arms coming around her back to pull her in closer.

“I thought you weren’t a hugger,” Belle teased as they broke apart.

“I’ll make an exception for ridiculously strong Australian gymnasts,” Gold muttered, but he still didn’t let her go for a long time afterwards, both of them content to just gaze at each other and wonder at this thing that had blossomed between them, something that would never have happened if it wasn’t for this magnificent Olympiad.

“So now what?” Gold breathed.

“Well…” Belle glanced over her shoulder at the Village. “I don’t know about you but I could really use another Big Mac before I have to start training again…”

Gold chuckled and offered her his arm, and they began to make the walk back towards hustle and bustle of the main accommodation area.

“We do sound a bit like the beginning of a bad joke,” he mused as they walked. “A Scottish shooter and an Australian gymnast walk into the Olympic Village McDonalds…”

Belle playfully batted his arm, and he retaliated by dipping in to kiss her cheek, a kiss that somehow managed to end up with their lips meeting and somehow managed to become a lot deeper than either of them intended.

Although the Games had ended, something just as exciting was about to begin…

 

 


End file.
